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The greatest gift is the
gift of the teachings
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Dharma Talks
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2014-10-21
Kamma and Intention: A Fresh Start
24:54
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Shaila Catherine
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This talk by Shaila Catherine was given as a part of the series "Enhancing Mindfulness Skills: A Seven-Week Series Dedicated to Cultivating Transformative Insight." Action influenced by intention is called kamma in the Pali language or karma in Sanskrit. We condition patterns, habits, and create pleasant or painful results through repeated intentional actions. The key to working with our patterns is not in the past, it is how we relate to present events. We are not condemned to dwell in any mental state. We have the potential to disentangle ourselves from suffering and cease creating causes for suffering. When we are mindful, we can notice the process that occurs between a stimulus and our response. Then, supported by calmness, wisdom, and clear intention, we stop reacting to life through the conditioned force of habit and may experience a truly spontaneous, free response to life.
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Insight Meditation South Bay - Silicon Valley
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2014-10-14
Many Kinds of Thoughts
41:01
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Shaila Catherine
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This talk was given by Shaila Catherine as a part of the series "Enhancing Mindfulness Skills: A Seven-Week Series Dedicated to Cultivating Transformative Insight."
Mindful of the thinking process, we explore how thoughts function in our lives. Unwholesome mental patterns can reinforce obsessive desires, identification, rigid opinions, and attachment to belief systems. What patterns are most common for you—planning, rumination, fantasy, rehearsing, daydreaming, judging, comparing, fixing, instructing? We observe the types of thoughts that arise, and reflect on whether those thoughts support our values and purpose. We learn to let go of unskillful thoughts and then focus our attention so that we use the mind skillfully. Buddhist tradition identifies three sources for proliferating thought: craving, conceit, and views. By examining the sources of conceptual proliferation, we can curb the wandering tendencies of mind.
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Insight Meditation South Bay - Silicon Valley
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2014-10-03
Speaking the Truth in Meditation. Listening Deeply
44:49
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Gregory Kramer
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In meditation, the truth is the truth of experience. To speak the truth, mindfulness is essential; its the only way experience can be known. This talk tracks the act of speaking from the wordless beginnings, through the tension behind the urge to speak (even innocuous speech), an onto the physical act. When the thread of sati is maintained, there is a natural authenticity, a coherence between experience and its symbolization in words. The deep of Listen Deeply is likewise traced, with mindfulness and concentration making possible a continuity of awareness. When such listening and speaking meet, the mind-to-mind transmission is of a different order from ordinary speech.
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Gaia House
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Insight Dialogue and Bhava - Becoming and Identification
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2014-09-23
Body: A Matter of Life
47:34
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Shaila Catherine
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This talk was given as a part of the series "Enhancing Mindfulness Skills: A Seven-Week Series Dedicated to Cultivating Transformative Insight." This talk focuses on "Four Elements." It is a traditional practice of mindfulness of the body. In ancient India, the materiality of the body was thought to be composed of four elements—earth, fire, wind and water. These four elements, in turn, have twelve characteristics—(earth) heaviness and lightness, hardness and softness, roughness and smoothness; (fire) heat and coolness; (wind) pushing and supporting; (water) fluidity and cohesion. All of these characteristics can be known with our mind and in our body. Discerning the characteristics of material elements will lead to a profound contemplation of impermanence and death. Seeing the impermanence of the body, we know we cannot control it. The body is not-self, it is not possessable, not I, and not eternally me. Understanding the impermanence of material elements and this body composed of elements, we learn to let go. This talk concludes with a guided meditation of body scans, with emphasis on the four elements and their respective characteristics.
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Insight Meditation South Bay - Silicon Valley
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2014-09-16
Breath: An Intimate Focus for Attention
45:06
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Shaila Catherine
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This talk was given as a part of the series "Enhancing Mindfulness Skills: A Seven-Week Series Dedicated to Cultivating Transformative Insight." How do we approach the breath? The breath can be used in a variety of ways to enhance mindfulness and to cultivate the insight into impermanence. Observing the breath calms the mind and allows us to tune into present moment experience. By observing the changes in breathing we can assess our feelings, emotions, and moods. Realizing the impermanent, conditioned, changing nature of the breath supports a skillful and powerful recollection of death. Let this contemplation of death be poignant enough to stir a sense of urgency. Reflect on what is really important in life.
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Insight Meditation South Bay - Silicon Valley
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2014-09-10
Transforming Unhealthy Habits through Mindfulness
1:24:50
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Hugh Byrne
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When harmful or unhealthy habits form, they can cause us much suffering and they can be hard to change because they are carried out automatically and without conscious awareness. Mindfulness is a key to changing harmful or unwanted habits as it provides skillful methods and practices to bring them into the light of awareness. Three elements of mindfulness are particularly important in changing unhealthy or unwanted habits - Intention, Attention, and Attitude. The talk explores these three elements with a focus on Intention.
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Insight Meditation Community of Washington DC
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IMCW Wednesday Evening Talks
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2014-08-19
Mindfulness in Close Relationships
41:37
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Matthew Brensilver
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This talk was given as a part of the series "Where Rubber Meets the Road: A Series on Mindful Living." A real place for us to check our practice is in our relationships. After all, we are deeply relational beings. Sometimes, our deepest grooves in our minds are only stimulated in relationships. Defilements and habits of mind, such as greed, anger, and delusion, arise in ways that they don't in other situations. In other words, forces of suffering that are latent in other situations can arise in the context of close relationships. Fortunately, this is actually not bad news. Rather, it offers us opportunity to practice, to see ourselves more clearly, to become more free, and to see how we can untangle the love from clinging.
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Insight Meditation South Bay - Silicon Valley
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In
collection:
Where Rubber Meets the Road: A Series on Mindful Living
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2014-08-14
Train for Nibbana
29:03
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Ayya Medhanandi
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On the path to freedom, every moment in every life situation is an opportunity for training the mind. We plant seeds of virtue, watering them with renunciation, respect, contentment, generosity and valiant effort. We clear the cobwebs of lifetimes from the mind with wisdom and mindfulness guarding us from the eight worldly winds, while forgiveness, love and compassion hasten the heart's awakening to Nibbana.
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Satipanna Insight Meditation (SIMT)
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2014-07-22
The Rebellious Path of Freedom from Habits of Mind
42:49
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Jason Murphy
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This talk was given as a part of the series "Where Rubber Meets the Road: A Series on Mindful Living." Vipassana takes our untrained mind as a starting point -- with its unruliness, hindrances, clinging and aversion -- and gives it a clear and systematic way of developing awareness. With practice, this awareness of what's happening within us and around us in any given moment is the key to not being a slave to our thoughts. It also teaches us to rebel against, or turn away from, our mind's tendencies towards greed, hatred and delusion; and instead, to incline our mind towards openness, freedom from attachment, freedom from suffering, loving-kindness, compassion, wisdom, and equanimity. This is the liberating power of awareness and mindfulness.
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Insight Meditation South Bay - Silicon Valley
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Tuesday Talks
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In
collection:
Where Rubber Meets the Road: A Series on Mindful Living
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2014-07-01
Where Rubber Meets the Road: A Series on Mindful Living
7:06:03
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Andrea Fella,
David Cohn,
Jason Murphy,
Margaret Gainer,
Matthew Brensilver,
Misha Merrill,
Robert Cusick,
Shaila Catherine,
Sharon Allen,
Tony Bernhard
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This series of talks provides insight and practical advice as to how to take the wonderful and serene mind that we develop during our meditation practice into our daily lives, into our relationships with others. Sometimes, the deepest grooves in our minds are only stimulated in our relationships to others. Defilements and habits of the mind, such as greed, anger and delusion, arise in ways that they don't in other situations. Fortunately, these daily life encounters offer us opportunities to practice, to see ourselves more clearly, and to become more free. This is the liberating power of awareness and mindfulness.
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Insight Meditation South Bay - Silicon Valley
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2014-07-01
Roles, Relationships, and Awakening
38:16
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Shaila Catherine
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This talk was given as a part of the series "Where Rubber Meets the Road: A Series on Mindful Living." We live in a world that requires a diversity of relationships. How do you choose your friends? What kind of relationships support or stunt your spiritual growth? How do you relate to life, and to love? We can bring wisdom and mindfulness to our interactive lives, to the roles that we perform, to our intimate sexual relationships, and our friendships; we practice both in solitude and in community. Harmony, generosity, and joy are developed through noble friendship. Relationships can challenge us to work with the tendencies of our own minds, clarify our precepts, develop compassion, learn to let go, and nurture the path of awakening. Deep friendship is considered to be the precursor of right view. A good friend encourages the best in us and supports our development of the noble eight fold path.
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Insight Meditation South Bay - Silicon Valley
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Tuesday Talks
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In
collection:
Where Rubber Meets the Road: A Series on Mindful Living
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2014-05-27
Mindfulness Sacred or Secular?
26:58
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Shaila Catherine
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Shaila Catherine gave this concluding talk in a guest speaker series that was organized to stimulate critical inquiry about mindfulness and how the teachings about mindfulness are manifesting in western cultures. This talk presents critical thinking, reflection, and discussion as integral elements of Buddhist practice. It refers to the early Buddhist custom of reciting teachings, sharing the Dhamma, and inviting correction and criticism about how the Dhamma was presented and taught. As mindfulness practices become mainstreamed, and applied in corporations and therapeutic contexts, some concern arises that the deep and liberating teachings of emptiness might be ignored as non-Buddhists, and sometimes non-practitioners, assert their own definitions of mindfulness in the media. This brief talk concludes with reflection questions about:
1. the meaning and definition of mindfulness—how is mindfulness different from attention?
2. how are ethics taught in Buddhist and secular applications of mindfulness?
3. how are secular interests affecting the development of western lay Buddhism?
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Insight Meditation South Bay - Silicon Valley
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Tuesday Talks
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2014-04-21
Practicing With Difficult Emotions
61:10
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Donald Rothberg
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We explore, through stories, poems and teachings, four inter-related ways to practice with difficult emotions, 1- using antidotes, 2- cultivating the "heart practices" of loving-kindness, compassion, joy, forgiveness, etc, 3- cultivating mindfulness and 4- bringing wisdom to the experience
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Spirit Rock Meditation Center
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Awakening in Service & Action: A Study Retreat on Socially Engaged Buddhism
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2014-03-21
with Dan Harris - Dharma in Dialogue: 10% Happier—What Meditation Can and Can't Do for You
1:23:34
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Mark Epstein
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In his new book, 10% Happier, ABC News anchor Dan Harris tells the story of how a skeptic became a meditator, and how the practice helped him better manage an extremely competitive career. One of the key developments in Dan's strange odyssey from avowed critic of all things touchy-feely to unlikely evangelist for meditation was an unusual friendship with Dr. Mark Epstein, the Buddhist psychiatrist and author. Through many years of regular lunches and dinners, Mark helped Dan see the value of mindfulness — and also its limits.
During this evening event, the two will share the story of their friendship and its lessons.
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New York Insight Meditation Center
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NYI Regular Talks
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